Believe it or not but the latest Centrino plateform will not support DirectX 10... at least not at launch.

"Although the majority of the hardware stuff is already there [to support DirectX 10], we are not going to introduce it at this stage", confirmed Intel VP Mooly Eden.

This is really a "bad" news for gamers and Windows Vista users and everyone who thought of using one of those Santa Rosa laptops as a desktop replacement, even if Intel would not admit it. The lack of DX10 support is more fuel for AMD to push it's own integrated platform that is using an ATI chipset and offers great DX10 support.

So if you want higher performance graphics, Eden amusingly suggested to get a Centrino notebook with an external graphic chip... but that was after he told us that doing just that, you'll be using more power and loose some of the advantages of the Core 2 Duo power features than if the notebook was using the homegrown chipset with the integrated graphics capabilities, the Wi-Fi radio, etc... Funny guy hey? Well I'm sure AMD is laughing... not so much the OEMs though ;-)

"You might be losing all this handshaking between the CPU and the chipset that we are doing and i'm not sure that the third party [ATI, Nvidia or VIA] will be able to do... it's like having somebody sleeping next to you knocking at the door and saying 'hey, you need a sleeping pill'... With respect to the wireless... who should be enough crazy to do it because based on the information i've got right now not only we have superior performance but our wireless solution is the lowest power consumption... but overall we think there's a value add in having the 3 components but if somebody choose to use one of the components will sell it to him, it's okay".

Also during his presentation, Mooly Eden mentioned that with the Pro version of the Centrino platform, it will not be possible to disable (willingly or not) the notebook's antivirus without being automatically disconnected from the Internet. In case of a virus attack, the IT administrator will still be able to control the user's laptop remotely thanks to some out of band communication with the CPU's manageability engine. I thought that that was a pretty cool feature, the same than VPro that exists for the business desktop chip.